flash sucks
Nov. 17th, 2005 02:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
egypturnashNo, really, it does. Every time I find a new bit of stupidity and brokenness in the editor I get pissed. Today's nugget of Flash sucking made me curl up and whimper for a while.
Now, most of the people talking about why they hate Flash are talking about end-user usability issues - huge ugly interfaces, broken homebrew widgets, stupid intros, etc. I'm annoyed by those too. But what really makes me hate it is the fucking editor.
Today's whimpering was caused by, first, watching Flash completely fuck up the colors on an imported PNG. No color correction info (not that Flash knows a damn thing about that anyway), looks nice and bright in every single program on my system - but import it to Flash and it comes out all faded.
And then I discovered what happens if you try to tween a bitmap in Flash. Try it yourself: import a bitmap on frame 1, make a new key on frame 3, and then motion tween between 1 and 3. Somehow, Flash thinks that a sensible inbetween between two perfectly identical frames involves the bitmap shrinking to half its size. It works sensibly if you stick the bitmap in a symbol, but holy shit this is so fucking broken. How can it do something this casually wrong?
And it's fucking slow. Look, I'm using a 1.25GHz machine. MX2004 should not be running slower than 4 or 5 did on the first-generation iMacs we had at Spümcø; I'm not sure how fast they were but they can't have been more than 350MHz.
And then there's the horde of brokennesses that happened after 5.
I'm not sure which version introduced it, but the behavior of de-"sync"ed tweens is fucked, fucked, fucked. Used to be you could have a sequence of frames on one layer, with motion tweens, and change how the symbol animated by unchecking a "synch" box in the frame's properties; this would let you hold an object on one frame, and make it start animating halfway through a motion. Now? Well, it changes on the keyframe you unsync at, but the later keyframes? It's anybody's guess what it'll show. So you get to do stupid, ugly workarounds involving extra layers in the timeline, just to work around this. I really hate it when I have to make my source files ugly because the tool is stupid.
And that goddamn fucking shit-head "smart" properties inspector panel. It is stupid. It is wrong. It obscures information that I need to have available, it breaks my flow by throwing extra clicks and pauses in to the mix. It makes me chalk up more distance of hand motion. I used to accept crap like this, but as the years go by I've turned into a usability nazi - anything that gets in the way of a smooth workflow is bad, any time I have to stop and think about the program instead of the project I'm using it for is bad. And I have to keep thinking about Flash's UI instead of the work I'm doing because of this fucking piece of shit marketroid bullet point "smart" properties panel. And it's a thorn in my side because it used to work much better and they threw that away and they're not bringing it back.
When I slither away from this gig of regular little Flash things, I'm going to delete Flash from my computer. In fact, I may back it up and do a complete system reinstall just to make sure all traces of Flash are gone. I might even delete the goddamn Flash plugin so I never have to be subjected to a Flash interface again. Yes, it's overreacting. But my loathing for this fucking program is deep, intimate, and complicated, and I really just want it out of my life. And I keep on somehow ending up using it again for money. Once I'm out of this current job, my rate for anything involving Flash will be a minimum of $300/h, and that includes the time I spend cursing the fucking thing - or, more precisely, I will simply not accept any work that involves Flash. At all. Ever again. It makes me snarl, it makes me throw things, it makes me grit my teeth, it fills me with hate. It didn't used to be this bad, but unlike Photoshop users who stick to an old version, I can't stick with the old, good version, as any work involving Flash requires interoperability with people who are stupid enough to keep giving Macromedia money for their shitty excuses for upgrades.
I want things that turn me into a seething ball of frustration out of my life.
Now, most of the people talking about why they hate Flash are talking about end-user usability issues - huge ugly interfaces, broken homebrew widgets, stupid intros, etc. I'm annoyed by those too. But what really makes me hate it is the fucking editor.
Today's whimpering was caused by, first, watching Flash completely fuck up the colors on an imported PNG. No color correction info (not that Flash knows a damn thing about that anyway), looks nice and bright in every single program on my system - but import it to Flash and it comes out all faded.
And then I discovered what happens if you try to tween a bitmap in Flash. Try it yourself: import a bitmap on frame 1, make a new key on frame 3, and then motion tween between 1 and 3. Somehow, Flash thinks that a sensible inbetween between two perfectly identical frames involves the bitmap shrinking to half its size. It works sensibly if you stick the bitmap in a symbol, but holy shit this is so fucking broken. How can it do something this casually wrong?
And it's fucking slow. Look, I'm using a 1.25GHz machine. MX2004 should not be running slower than 4 or 5 did on the first-generation iMacs we had at Spümcø; I'm not sure how fast they were but they can't have been more than 350MHz.
And then there's the horde of brokennesses that happened after 5.
I'm not sure which version introduced it, but the behavior of de-"sync"ed tweens is fucked, fucked, fucked. Used to be you could have a sequence of frames on one layer, with motion tweens, and change how the symbol animated by unchecking a "synch" box in the frame's properties; this would let you hold an object on one frame, and make it start animating halfway through a motion. Now? Well, it changes on the keyframe you unsync at, but the later keyframes? It's anybody's guess what it'll show. So you get to do stupid, ugly workarounds involving extra layers in the timeline, just to work around this. I really hate it when I have to make my source files ugly because the tool is stupid.
And that goddamn fucking shit-head "smart" properties inspector panel. It is stupid. It is wrong. It obscures information that I need to have available, it breaks my flow by throwing extra clicks and pauses in to the mix. It makes me chalk up more distance of hand motion. I used to accept crap like this, but as the years go by I've turned into a usability nazi - anything that gets in the way of a smooth workflow is bad, any time I have to stop and think about the program instead of the project I'm using it for is bad. And I have to keep thinking about Flash's UI instead of the work I'm doing because of this fucking piece of shit marketroid bullet point "smart" properties panel. And it's a thorn in my side because it used to work much better and they threw that away and they're not bringing it back.
When I slither away from this gig of regular little Flash things, I'm going to delete Flash from my computer. In fact, I may back it up and do a complete system reinstall just to make sure all traces of Flash are gone. I might even delete the goddamn Flash plugin so I never have to be subjected to a Flash interface again. Yes, it's overreacting. But my loathing for this fucking program is deep, intimate, and complicated, and I really just want it out of my life. And I keep on somehow ending up using it again for money. Once I'm out of this current job, my rate for anything involving Flash will be a minimum of $300/h, and that includes the time I spend cursing the fucking thing - or, more precisely, I will simply not accept any work that involves Flash. At all. Ever again. It makes me snarl, it makes me throw things, it makes me grit my teeth, it fills me with hate. It didn't used to be this bad, but unlike Photoshop users who stick to an old version, I can't stick with the old, good version, as any work involving Flash requires interoperability with people who are stupid enough to keep giving Macromedia money for their shitty excuses for upgrades.
I want things that turn me into a seething ball of frustration out of my life.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-17 10:26 pm (UTC)MX+ hate: ignores keyboard shortcuts for tools semi-erratically
no subject
Date: 2005-11-17 10:43 pm (UTC)* while in direct selection arrow (a, not v) most moving-around meta keys are ignored (space-drag to move canvas, apple-space-drag to zoom in): why? "fuck you, stop working with the points, go use the other arrow tool!" is the message I get.
* drag from toolbar palette well into edit window to select a color. all toolbox shortcuts are ignored. Which is a pain because my usage pattern for filling areas is to have some other tool selected, click in the palette well, ignore the swatch palette and drag into the main edit area to pluck a color, and then try to hit 'k' to switch to the paint bucket. And hit it again, uselessly, a few more times, while swearing.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-17 10:55 pm (UTC)I can't remember if you were around when Blake very kindly arranged for a copy of Photoshop 8 to enter my posession. Lamentably, the crack somehow broke the key shortcuts; everything said they were on, they just... didn't work, didn't do stuff. Everything was a maddening ten-second journey to the top of the screen, and an equally frustrating meander through submenus. I nearly screamed in frustration before finally canning the thing and getting a copy of 6. And while I miss a few of the snazzier things that PS8 did, the key shortcuts are life and breath.
no subject
Date: 2005-11-17 11:04 pm (UTC)And having the key shortcuts come and go as a result of simple, common actions... geeze. I don't think they actually do any testing around Macromedia. At all. Not judging by the number of hair-pulling little things about Flash.